Friday, June 29, 2007

The Meehan Deposition

The deposition of Dr. Brian Meehan is now available at Liestoppers. As in his testimony at Mike Nifong’s ethics hearing, Meehan was difficult to pin down and overly wordy. But in several key areas, he was damning for Nifong—perhaps even more so than he would be in the hearing itself.

Previewing the unclear and occasionally contradictory ethics hearing testimony that he would offer, Meehan struggled to give straight answers to even the simplest of questions. For instance, when Nifong attorney Dudley Witt asked him how many forensic cases DNA Security handled each month, Meehan couldn’t say; he could talk, however, about how many “specimens” the lab handles, which (he said) would be between 300 and 600 monthly.

It sounded, then, as if DSI was a significant figure in law enforcement —handling a minimum of 3600 specimens per year. Witt followed up: since 2005, then, in how many forensics cases had Meehan testified?

Meehan: “I would say that it’s probably less than half a dozen.”

Oh.

According to the transcript, here’s how Meehan described the manner in which his lab was hired to conduct DNA tests in the highest-profile criminal case in North Carolina history:

There was phone calls being made between the detective and Nifong to determine if they would want us to do the work and if the price was right and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, back and forth.

At one point, Meehan referred to Mark Gottlieb(!) and Ben Himan as “attorneys”; when Bar attorney Doug Brocker asked him if he meant to say “detectives,” Meehan admitted it was so, adding, “You all look alike to me.” At another point, he ordered Witt to “rephrase that question. That was kind of awkward”; he later lectured Witt that “you might want to think about being more specific” in the attorney’s interrogatories.

During the course of the deposition, Meehan:

claimed to have done “depositions” in criminal cases (neither side’s lawyers inquired further into this bizarre assertion);

said the first person who contacted him was Detective “Sorsey” (the officer’s name is Soucie);

compared DNA to whole-wheat and white spaghetti or like having a house on “29 Main Street”;

rebuked Witt for calling him “just a geneticist”; and

told Brocker that he “will not, absolutely will not” testify in the trial if he wound up being called after noon on Friday.

In discussions about the December 15 hearing, Meehan rebuked Brad Bannon for having asked him “a series of questions that were directed and not easy to answer.”

DSI Practice

Meehan struggled to recall exactly when and with whom he spoke to people from either Nifong’s office or the DPD about the case. His excuse? “We handle business like that all the time; there’s no need to make specific notes.”

Meanwhile, as he did on the stand, Meehan had a habit of meandering off into tangential matters, forcing both attorneys to try to steer him back on course.

Specifics

Despite his odd behavior, in the deposition, just as in the trial, Meehan was damning to Nifong’s case. At the April 10, 2006 meeting—of which Nifong was later to claim no recollection—Meehan said that “we very carefully went over this data,” which included results that the DNA of multiple unidentified males was found on Mangum’s rape kit. Meehan recalled going over the profiles “in detail” with Gottlieb, Nifong, and Himan. Since he considered this information “critical,” he was “absolutely” certain that he discussed it with Nifong on April 10.

(Gottlieb, it’s worth remembering, said that during these meetings, he “wasn’t quite understanding it” and “was completely lost,” not exactly inspiring confidence in the DPD’s handling of events.)

Moreover—contrary to Nifong’s repeated assertions to the court that he and the police effectively sat mute during these meetings—Meehan remembered that “Mr. Nifong and the two police investigators asked questions.” Indeed, “there were some general questions, to more complex questions. We spent a lot of time talking about it.” Meehan stated that Nifong asked him to try to work on the specimens with the unidentified male DNA to see if better resolution could be obtained. Meehan said that he felt “it was important that [Nifong] understood—and I believe he understood” that there were unidentified male DNA profiles.

Meehan also said that he made clear that the fingernail DNA mixture was not a “match” to Dave Evans but simply a mixture from which Evans, and many other males, could not be excluded. Moreover, Meehan recalled Nifong asking him about the possibility of DNA transference in a trashcan (Mangum’s fingernails were, of course, found in Evans’ bathroom trash can). “Suppose I blew my nose and threw the tissue in a trash can, and it laid on this fingernail, could there be a transfer. That’s a highly likely transfer.” [emphasis added]

If this aspect of Meehan’s deposition is to be believed, Nifong knew from the start that the fingernail DNA was utterly useless in tying Evans to any “crime.”

Meehan denied that Nifong ever asked him to prepare a report modeled on the SBI style, and said that the “positive match” report seemed to be what Nifong desired based on conversations between the two. After some prodding from Brocker, Meehan confirmed that he had never produced a report that didn’t include all test results before.

Nifong’s Perjury Trap

Meehan was clear on two points: (1) on May 12, “we first reviewed the information in the case entirely . . . we then went over the report”; and (2) he had a “specific” conversation with Nifong that the May 12 report was not a final report.

Indeed, if these sections of Meehan’s deposition are to be believed, Nifong would seem to have committed perjury both in his unequivocal statement that between May 12 and December 13, he never read the report; and in his deposition claim that he considered the May 12 report a final report, if with the material on the unidentified male DNA included.

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“I’m a geneticist,” concluded Meehan, “and legal jargon is probably something I need to stay away from.” On that point, probably everyone involved in the case would agree.

54 comments:

...“I’m a geneticist,” concluded Meehan.::Your posting describes ANY geneticist that escaped from one of our teaching hospital labs and ended up owning a business that he does not understand.::All of us who have worked with these folks don't talk with them in meetings....we ask them to fill out forms.

It is incredible that after the conclusion of the case and Nifong's career, we would have this deluge of information! The various statements and depositions are unbelievable proving once and for all that the name of this blog was well chosen.

1. Testified honestly in the December hearing that brought this hoax to end.

2. He claims in this depostition that he did not call the Evans nonexclusion a match.

3. He prepared a report as directed by his client a District Attorney. Surely he was being reasonable when trusting a DA about what he legally could do.

4. His results remain uncontradicted. He found the "other" male DNA. He found no matches to the Duke lacrosse players.

Now certainly doing what Nifong asked him to do is going to follow him for the rest of his expert career. But the more this case unfolds, the more we see this is a Nifong deal. Many of the other villans those too close to the situation want to see have turned out not to be such villans:

A. Manly, collected the samples that showed NO DNA connection.

B. Levicy, assisted Manly, dispite her inexperinced and wrong opinions. She is not the first nor will she be the last rookie taken in by a savy old street walker.

C. Himan, expressed doubts if they had enough to indict.

D. Meehan, confirmed no match to the players. Testified honestly if not forthrightly about what Nifong asked him to do and what Nifong knew and when in the case.

Now certaily there are villans other than Nifong in this case. Among them are:

a. Mangum of course for sticking with this hoax

b. Wilson for his witness intimidation

c. Gottlieb for his witness intimidation

but the bottom line is that this event was mostly a Nifong event not some huge conspiracy.

Looking back to those early days of News Headlines & nightly condemnation by pundits on TV it is sickening to hear these professionals were lying. They never had anything.

Yet do I hear one word from Nancy Grace, Lis Weihl, Wendy Murphy, Norm Early , or Georgia Goslee? Have we hear Duff Wilson, Samiha Khanna, Bob Ashly, Brianne Dopart, or anyone of the numerous newspaper reporters who wrote the lies of the police?

To JLS I sorta get yur notion that many of the co-players in this evil, twisted drama were not entirely wrong and evil. On the other hand Bonnie (of Bonnie and Cylde) probably never killed any of the myriad victims of that gang. But she did not make much of an effort to distance herself either, from the crazed bloodshed carried out by C. Barrow and his friends. so maybe it was wrong for Frank Hamers posse to have shot both of them to flinders on that backroad in North Lousiana without even a hint of courtesy. Whatever. See, we all knew for sure that there has been no excuse, at all, since about May 2006 for not going at Nifong without mercy or restraint. Maybe there will have been some random collateral damage to his colleagues. There was a lot of that, by the way, inflicted to bring down the 3rd Reich. Sympathy for the enablers? No.

Bonnie Parker broke plenty of laws. Many too close followers of this case are more like Mike Nifong than anyone else. They want to charge the people who car pooled with an embezzler with being enablers of the crime.

And I said nothing about collateral damages nor sympathy for Meehan. I only said, I don't understand the anger at him.Certainly there has been some collateral damages to the expert careers of Mehan and Levicy for example.

What I wondered about is why some of the too close to the issue people continually act like Mike Nifong and keep claiming that people committed crimes when their is no evidence that happened. So don't offer Levicy, Meehan, Manly etc sympathy, but QUIT ACTING LIKE MIKE NIFONG.

Anon 1:33 : Even more fascinating is to go to certain left wing blogs, especially ultra feminist ones, and look at the cutthroat posts back in March and April of '06. The hatred shown for the lacrosse players, innocent people the posters don't even know, is bloodcurdling. Some of them were smart enough to drop talking about the case when the initial DNA tests came back in April of '06, some were dumb enough to hold onto "something MUST have happened." Most totally ignored the case by January/February of '07. You just know they're mortified it didn't go like they wanted.

1. The taxi driver who stood up for Seligmann's alibi and found himself arrested for that.

2. Mangum's children. No explanation necessary.

3. The blacks who voted for Nifong based on his racist rhetoric. They were played like children -- How can they look a Duke student in the eye again?

4. All black women who would have a white man friend or mentor. I'm not even talking about romance here. Think of all the black women who could use a white man as a friend or mentor in the business world ... a boss or supervisor. What white boss or supervisor is going to agree to work late/alone or have a private lunch or meeting with a black woman employee now? Only the ones who say, "Oh, yeah, I've got millions of dollars in case I'm falsely accused of sexual assault."

This whole act of Nifong that he didn't read anything, in the most important case in his life, is just absurd.Then again, what can Nifong say about his desire to put 3 innocent young men in jail for most of their lives without a scintilla of evidence.

KC,Must be a misprint;Meehan surely said:"I'm a genetic freak,and normal human speech is something I need to stay away from."

With due respect, JLS,Meehan had to have seen in thepapers/media the fact that the DNA testing from his lab was not being reported upon.

1:33 adds some to the list of collaborators/co-conspirators.(Thanks)

What points to this as a massiveconspiracy - (and massive collaborative effort) - is theprobability that nearly any ofthe major players could have seriously hindered the NifongRailroad.

Example: if Brodhead had insisted upon protecting his student's rights?

If people like Wendy Murphy hadn'tinsisted that "rape victims"(and prosecutors) never lie, such traction wouldn't have beensustained.

Those are mostly enablers - but they assisted in a way that basketball statistics could be assigned:

"Broadhead scored 2 points, but had11 assists."

"The 88 scored 0 points, but had 87assists."

Finally, the evidence of a conspiracyis found in...(drum roll) the Duke settlements!So far: Kim Curtis: grade retaliationDuke: a lot of things, none ofwhich are allowed to be made publicaccording to the settlement. (It couldbe inferred that witness tamperingand violating the students' Constitutional rights were issuesthat were part of the settlement.)The inclusiveness of the settlement indicates the extentand reach of the conspiracy: the 88 are indemnified from suits filed by the 3 accused, as areother Dukie officials.

JLS is making some important points in determining how to judge people at the edges of this great deception. In spite of his bumbling, Meehan was able to get the science right even if he had some difficulty in answering questions about his report. Perhaps concern that he had not followed a more standard presentaiton or report colored his behavior in court (read fear). He seemed to know how the contrived document had been used (read manipulated). Still too many were not merely manipulated by Nifong. There was a group attitude of political correctness that enveloped this entire matter. It was the metanarrative of vindictive people who wanted Nifong's version of events to be true. These people have been trained, not educated, but trained to think this way. They couldn't see the trees for the forest of bigoted thinking that cobwebbed their cognitive abilities beyond any rational understanding. Along with Duke University faculty and administration they became pot-bangers in self-decption. They were wrong and some were even evil.

"Meehan struggled to recall exactly when and with whom he spoke to people from either Nifong’s office or the DPD about the case. His excuse? 'We handle business like that all the time; there’s no need to make specific notes,'"

Now we know why Nifong hired DSI. Meehan joined him and Gottlieb as members in good standing of the Good Notes Consist of No Notes Club.

Based on Meehan's behavior and testimony, I wouldn't trust him to walk my dog let alone conduct a DNA analysis.

Sweetmick says to JLS: Meehan deliberately compiled a report that omitted the exculpatory DNA data. He knew exactly what the significance was of preparing such a report. He was dishonest. Re Himan and Gottlieb, if they went to that grand jury and said as follows, "You know, there was no DNA , not semen nor a single cell, connecting the 46 players to the accuser. The accuser says they ejaculated in her and didn't use condoms. DNA from 4 unidentified males was found in her. No, we have made no efforts to determine whose DNA it is. Sgt. Shelton wrote in his report the accuser is a whacked out, non - credible, story changing mess. Our DA said, in effect, 'we ain't got no case.Actually, he said, 'we're f**cked.'" Now, if Himan and Gottlieb had told this truth to the grand jury, there would have been no indictments. They were dishonest. Along with Meehan, they were scared, cautious conspirators with Nifong.

That Nifong is guilty of ignorance (he doesn't seem to be able to read a report, even though it is critical to his case) is now fairly widely accepted.The truly scary part is that the case presented to the Grand Jury (though none of has any idea what "evidence" was presented) was allowed to continue for 3/4 of a year. Consider the number of people who could have derailed the railroad and CHOSE not to do so:HighwaymanGot-libMe-handTrace-E C-lyinWillSinSigh G-her-kneeCrystal M-Hang-emTara Letmeseeand the list continues...

Could have derailed the train. Chose not to. Complicity?

If this many people, from such a diverse grouping, could be intimidated by one rogue DA, the power of the DA's office itself needs to be investigated--not just in Do-em but everywhere.

As for the 88, those in higher academia have had license far too long to thrust their own political agendas on impressionable young adults. Can you imagine if primary school teachers had the same license with young students? The Ward Churchill's and 88er's need to be reigned in. Booted from academia? No. Made to account for their actions? Yes.It is most interesting that the "Fairness Doctrine" is being harped on these days. Those in Congress need to forget about the airwaves until they have cleaned their own houses (and the DA's position is an elected one). Federal money does not support talk radio (except PBS ironically) but federal money does support higher education. Where is the concern for fairness? These three young men will NEVER be allowed to lead normal lives. As Dave Evans said--when we die, our obituaries will read One of the Duke LAX Rapists. Political correctness? That's the cry. Correct? No But definitely political. Broad(butempty)Head needs to revisit the curriculum taught at Duke. It is time for pseudo-curricula like Women's Studies and AAAS to be taken from the campus. Their sole purposes are to promote sexism and racism.

I do not believe the hoax would have continued if it were not for Brannon. Two reasons: the first thing a good lawyer does in cases like this is to call in an expert to go over every inch of a technical report. Second, the lawyers knew immediately that Crystal had probably slept with 20 guys the week before the incident. They had p.i.'s all over Durham. They probably have the names of all her johns. Imagine how much sleep *they* were losing when they heard the dna report was going to be made public.

8:31 Your position is merely a variation of blaming the victims (the Duke boys.) The defense had been asking for the reports for months. You thin will say they could get their own testing, but after the "contamination" of testing by two previous organizations the "samples" at that point would be less reliable.

Although you probably meant Bannion, I resent your bringing poor, old Judge Brannon into this controversy.

It's "widely accepted" that Nifong was ignorant? The only people who accept that fairy tale are the people who believe all the lies that come out of Nifong's mouth. Nifong had to choose between admitting that he read and understood the evidence (but decided to ignore it and/or lie about it), or claiming that he was too lazy and stupid to read and understand the evidence. Nifong chose the latter, for obvious reasons.

So, Nifong used the excuse that the "unidentified male dna" was useless because it was similar to a child rubbing against a kindergarten teacher but KNEW that the possible match with Evans and the fingernail was useless because Meehan basically told him so. Was he ever called on that?

"Yet do I hear one word from Nancy Grace, Lis Weihl, Wendy Murphy, Norm Early , or Georgia Goslee?"

Actually, I believe that Lis Weihl is one of the people we hear from here. I can't check the video at my current computer so I can't be certain.

re: the general issue of those who assisted Nifong and whether or not they were "villains":

One thing that I think should not be overlooked in this situation is what we might call the "deference to the expert" factor. It is actually only the pathological personality who refuses to accept that anyone else could ever know more than he does on some particular subject; such people appoint themselves as the "experts" because they are so convinced of their opinion, and then dismiss as not being "experts" anyone who disagrees with that opinion, regardless of that person's credentials.

Avoiding that attitude, which pretty effectively prevents one from learning anything from anyone else or correcting one's oversights, is important. However, it can lead to another trap: accepting another person as the "expert" based on their credentials and their conviction that they are right even though their opinion doesn't make sense to your analysis. IMHO this may explain the behavior of many actors in this affair. Himan, for instance, strikes me as fairly low on the DPD totem pole, and of relatively little experience in police work -- not enough, in other words, to feel he could challenge others like Gottlieb and Nifong on procedure. "I don't understand why we're moving ahead with a case and saying in public it's so strong when it looks so weak to me," he might well have said. "But maybe I just don't know as well as the Sergeant and the DA what I should be looking at and why it means the case really is strong." Meehan is an expert in his field. However, that doesn't mean he would necessarily know to trust his understanding of the law against that of the District Attorney. It's easy in hindsight to look back and say "so what if Nifong was the DA?! He was breaking the rules left and right!" Yes he was. We know that now. Only those mired in pure denial try to argue now that Nifong's conduct was fully legal and ethical. But at the time, could someone with only a layman's knowledge of the law confidently assert that preparing a report in the fashion that the District Attorney directed would be a violation of the law? Wouldn't that layman be more likely to consider the District Attorney the expert on the law he should be deferring to on such questions?

In my mind we must take this factor into account when judging any actor in this affair. There are some it will not excuse -- for instance, see Tara Levicy's "explanation" that rape is about power and not ejaculation, after it was public knowledge that Mangum claimed that she had had a player's ejaculate in her mouth and had spit it out onto the floor where it left no trace. But I believe that it should be considered in regards to all, and that those whose fault was primarily trusting Nifong's reputation for honesty should not be too vilified.

Macd says...Did anyone else catch in Meehan's testimony that the report wasn't final because he was expecting to do more testing on any new suspect samples that might be sent to him?I wish someone asked the follow-up question: "why were you expecting more suspect samples?"The answer might have been: "Well, my testing showed that none of those 46 did it, so it must have been someone else."

To JLSI read your post about the ire toward Mehan. Tara Levicy should be looked at because she spoke beyond her expertise and she spoke as the one who did the exam when we know it was Dr. Manly who did it. This is horrible medical practice and ethics. She should be listed with Gotleib, Himan, and Wilson as being investigated. I agree that many were just brought along for the ride, but she was an active participant.

Perhaps that's the case in North Carolina, but it's not the case in the Federal Courts (or many other states). It seems plausible that Meehan could have been deposed in criminal matters before -- it's certainly not a bizarre claim.

I can only speak for myself, but I find Meehan offensive because of all the bit players he had no stake or bias other than MONEY.

Levicy was a rookie nurse who went into SANE to help rape victims and she got taken in by a crazy lying prostitute.

Ben Himan at the very least talked to his superiors about the lack of evidence and didn't want to indict Seligman, if not for his OWN contemporaneous notes we wouldnt' know that Gottleib's memory report was a pure falsification.

Gottlieb and Wilson doubtless committed criminal acts, but as Durham residents they have already been trained in how things work, and once a cop or investigator runs afoul of the local DA his career may be over, also police tend to believe everyone is guilty anyway.

I see Meehan in a different light, he was a totally objective out of Durham executive with no ties to NIfong or Durham, no need to ever function in the cesspool again, Mike NIfong could hold NOTHING over his head and still he crafted the reports and much of his testimony to hide his findings and the truth. Inexcusiable.

Meehan must have expected that his findingof matches to four males who were not Lacrosseplayers was going to generate huge headlines.

When there was not a peep about it for manymonths, he had to know that Nifong was hidingit. Yet, he sat silently and idly by while threeboys were being railroaded towards convictionsthat would have landed them in jail for 30 yrseach. I am sorry, but that makes him one ofthe "bad guys" in this case.

Given the ease with which both Meehan and Nifong dismissed the multiple male DNA profiles found on Crystal, that Crystal was like a kindergarten teacher or she could have picked it up from the back of a police car, I have long doubted if there was any legitimate forensic reason to do the more sensitive tests that Meehan's outfit did after the SBI tests found no player matches, given the the tale that Crystal told (multiple assailants, ejaculations) and the fact that the DNA samples were taken shortly after the alleged rapes.

The fact that they ran with the non-exclusion of Evan on an artificial fingernail in Evan's bathroom, indicates to me that the whole point of the Meehan tests was to find some transfer DNA that could be used to create the illusion of DNA evidence. With Crystal having been rolling around on the floor of the house in minimal clothing, and her having spent a considerable amount of time in the boys' bathroom, it probably surprised Nifong that there was no player DNA on her; if there had been it would not have been dismissed as possible contamination, transfer or given a benign "kindergarten teacher" explanation.

In other words, the whole DNA Securities/Meehan testing program was dishonest before it even began, and both Meehan and Nifong had to have known that.

Meehan, you may recall, went out of his way to offer Nifong an enticing price -- clearly, to elicit future business from Shithead and, by extension, from more prosecutors or in other criminal cases, which were not (as we all can see now) his strong point.

We can at least take pleasure in knowing that this didn't work out for Mr. Obfucktation.

Meehan is clearly ruined for life as a witness, and probably for any non-testimonial forensic work beyond the most straightforward canine paternity cases. He is one of the world's worst witnesses, and worse, now the world knows that he's dirty and participated in a fraud.

Congratulations, Sir -- you managed to self-destruct while also taking down another crook. Bye, now.

Yes you are wrong. Mangum was in fact not thinking of rape until asked by a nurse at Durham Access. Durham Access is not Duke University Hospital. The latter is where Levicy came in to the picture hours and hours later.

I think if you would just type they name Mangum, follow the case and not spend so much time coming up with clever insult names, then you might have remembered that. But then again, maybe not, I find I screw up details in this case from time to time too. It is a complicated case.

I have suspected the exact same thing! Thatthe only reason Nifong decided to pursue moresensitive DNA testing was to keep the casegoing by finding some transfer DNA to tenuouslylink the players to Ms Magnum.

So think of the phenomenal hyprocrisy here:the strong positive matches with four unidentifiedmales -- Ms Magnum could have picked that upfrom the back of a police car BUT the mixturematch to the fingernail wherein David Evans couldnot be eliminated THAT there was hard evidencewarranting an indictment.

The next time somebody says they feel sorryfor that SOB Nifong, I am going to blow my top.He absolutely deserves jail time.

He absolutely knew they were innocent evenbefore he got the indictments. Now think atthe end of testimony in the first phase of thetrial, where right when it ended, he said hedeserved disbarment. Why? He knew whathe had done. He knows he actually deservesmuch worst than that.

I have read about a couple or few lab scandles. They are real scandle where labs were messing up results either accidently or to support the prosecution.

That is not the case here. But certainly it is important for all of us to wonder as you do how much experts try to please the attorneys that hire them. I do know I was invited to a political function with some attorneys and one I was chatting with along with an attorney who had hired me in the past considered me "your expert" as he said aloud to the attorney I had worked for????

Meehan is a leech who will do anything for money.I am sure, with the way he manipulates facts, he will have a long and great career as an expert defense witness.He'll be making 4 hundred dollars an hours baffling juries with his bullshit.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review